(Sorry, I couldn't control myself.)

Jean Baudrillard, the postmodern theorist who made my head hurt in grad school and long after, died in Paris recently [BBC News obit, [wikipedia entry].

Today, everything has changed: no longer is meaning in short supply, it is produced everywhere, in ever increasing quantities -- it is demand which is weakening. And it is the production of this demand for meaning which has become crucial for the system. Without this ... power is nothing but an empty simulacrum and an isolated effect of perspective...

In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities

[via pinguerin]